Fading
by Paradigm of Writing
Summary: Ike is the only thing keeping Marth alive, their shared past helps add fuel to the fire. Destroyed homes, shattered hearts, vicious relationships, burned arms and faces... they all add up to the same result. If the two of them were to concentrate hard enough, each memory would slowly fade away to a place where nothing, yet everything exists.


**Hey everyone, with a brand new one-shot that I've been working on for nearly six months. My writing in this is beyond anything I've ever experienced before and I mean it- like it's something I've never written before! I've tried writing some other things after this was completed but my writing would not reach the same level. I don't think I'll ever hit something like this again. This, to put it generally is about Marth and Ike with a bit and pieced story about them recovering and coping with the end of the last Smash tournament and how something is not how it seems. Please enjoy Fading.**

* * *

The day started the same way it has been doing as of late. This time they think it was in a Waffle House on a Saturday off the highway going to Texas from Arizona.

* * *

Marth hates letting Ike take the night shift when they drive. He rationalizes it silently to himself (and aloud when the incentive is there) by saying he always seems to power out when the sun goes down (with all the sudden laxness of a puppet with cut strings), and Ike is usually up with him anyway (because the ends of those strings-says a voice that belongs to neither Ike nor Marth but is inside both of them- the ends of those cut and chewed strings are tied to the beginnings of yours, and you know that, somehow. Instinctually, chemically) so why not make it easy (and give in).

(But these things are little, meaningless to the sum of the whole idea. They miss the big picture)

On the other hand, Marth also understands unhealthy coping habits- he understands Ike's need for driving, the need to move even when it does more (and more and more and more) harm than good (he gets it too, the itch, the big city and little town's apprehensive oil slick that causes something to slither through. Just another burning memory.)

Marth understands these things about Ike (intimate things crawling in the dark, interwoven gray electric snowballs, and wavering rorschach blots burning the insides of eyelids. He understands things like coagulated blood and missing pieces of souls and nightmares in the daylight, dreams in the greenlight, things like sand and the gospels of madmen), so he doesn't say anything.

(Mostly because he doesn't have to.)

* * *

"Bats," Ike says over the din of the wind whipping through cracked windows. "Bats. I think one is waving at me."

Marth bites the inside of his cheek. "I-I'm not doing this." A stabbing pressure builds over his right eye, and he wonders what a burst aneurysm feels like.

Ike laughs, the sound drowning over the wind, ripped and electric and it shakes the Jeep, the (sand) gravel under the wheels now becoming a crunching backdrop to the whole mess. "Sorry- What was that?"

"Too sober," Marth says, slouching into the noose of his seatbelt. "Too awake. Call again later."

The desert air is cool and dry, and it feels like the epilogue or maybe the prologue of some Great-er Perhaps instead of a redeye'd imitation of an ode to the Master Hand of Torture. Ike imagines some Australian man in sunglasses talking on the phone instead or a lawyer wearing a hawaiian print shirt in the passenger seat, instead of his boyfriend sitting next to him. Sometimes, it helps him. He wishes that it didn't help him.

Marth scratches at the sore red lines the belt leaves on his skin, mindful of Ike's anxious, while aggravating humming, killing time until Marth (gives in) plays along. Pruritus rings have embedded themselves brain deep with prophylactic tenacity, ink worms braiding into his vision that fizzle and limp away from the sterile dark St. Elmo's fire that blankets itself over the driver's seat.

"They have something for that." Ike comments dazedly, trying to focus on the road.

One of the black phones buzz in the backseat, unlikely to be answered like the twenty other times before. Marth stares at the phone intensely, trying to think of which Smasher could be calling them for the fifty thousandth time. They were never going to pick the phones up. Thoughts drift from the monster beside him to islands and water. He thinks of the aquamarine, reflective surface that lets life breath. " _Unreachable by tire or foot_." Marth thinks. He doesn't think it. He knows it.

Marth brushes off his glasses, and lets them clatter to the floor mat under his feet. He considers crushing the thin metal, the sole of his shoe poking with glass. What would it feel like? He goes back to thinking about an island made of sand in a grey lake, glass bottles at the shore and sharp rocks like linings of teeth on a maw of a dormant landlocked leviathan.

He kicks the glasses beneath his seat and rolls his neck on his shoulders until it cracks. The pain is not worth it in the end. "They've got something for everything." he remarks snidely, cuddling up into a ball on his seat.

"Wonderful country, oh and isn't it?" Ike creaks, pronouncing 'country' all wrong, harder east coast accent with all the emphasis on cunt, please direct questions to my attorney. (That's not his voice.)

The shape of St. Elmo's fire stretches out a phantom arm of twisted sinew, while it melds like tar smoke through the glass casing of the speedometer. The engine roars, a coarse unnatural bellow that sounds like words, like, " _Are you sure, Mr. Lowell? Really? What about the old memories? Are you sure you want to revisit them and have them haunt you once more?_ "

"Without a doubt." Marth says to himself, and presses the heel of his palm into the hollows of his eyes.

* * *

"Don't think of it like that," Ike tells him, cold hard hands holding Marth down by his elbows. He's breaking a rule here. It's in the quiver of a faint pulse, marked by a birthmark, so Ike leans down and latches on with teeth. Harsh breath stutters out, and Marth is hanging onto Ike's shirt as much he can, both hands fisted, cutting crescents into his hands even through the cloth. He has no leverage here. "Trust (believe, bleed with, burn against) me, okay?"

Lifting blue curls closer, Ike plaits his fingers in his boyfriend's spine and burns probing fissures into Marth's very being, almost so painfully excruciating in familiarity he begins to forget, just a little, where he ends, where the voice that is his own begins.

" _Alright, just stop talking with his voice_." Marth hears in the waterlogged corridors of his mind. Burbled as it comes, his own voice sounds steady, more tired than unflinching, but real too, not the faded and fading whispers of ghosts, but real. It felt far away to him, drowned or suspended somewhere deep and just out of reach. Its reverbs brush along the pull of his breath, and rings there like crushed glass. It makes him laugh. He laughs low, and quietly all the while letting his mind and part of his hurt soul dissolve into the black encasing of unconsciousness.

Corroded copper and iron and lead encases his lungs at a slow crawl then as darkness consumes him, the thin meat of his hips cleave from his bones, and leaves the very last of his words to curdle like milk and spill soundlessly over the distant Earth. " _It's easier like this._ " he thinks. He gives in to the temptation of sleep, soundless breathing and nightmares that burn images into brains.

He loosens his grip and lets the seething pit swallow him whole. It's kissing him so close that to him it's his new vision of hell. Ike shifts off of Marth and the two lie next to each other in bed, their breaths rapid and shallow. Slick sweat rolls off Ike's forehead and pools in the middle of his sternum. He soundlessly observes Marth sleep, so can feel intimacy once more. " _All can be seen without speaking_." he thinks.

They don't speak. Marth doesn't talk since he's too consumed in his dream, and Ike lets his tiredness overcome him. Before long he too is sighing in contentment, his dream actually being rewarding for a change. Marth's is an alternate, twisted reality.

In the thick of sleep without dreams, Marth almost doesn't hear Lucina speak, the consonants are warm where they press softly against the nape of his neck, he can only make out fragments behind his closed eyelids, they glitter preciously as jewels faceted by flickering flame. Blanketed heated hands drift to cup his cold jaw and he feels them buzz like sunbeams over his skin, in a stained glass morning bracketed by the mortal rhythm of their shared breath and the tangle of their limbs, the world lifts at all corners, turning powdery and insubstantial until all that is left is only a transient impression. Marth forgets to feel exposed, cored and vulnerable. Too bad Lucina is just another remnant of broken memories.

* * *

Marth lets his fingers lapel against his side. "I don't believe you ever thanked me."

Ike looks over at his boyfriend with a curious gaze. "I beg your pardon?"

"For the sex," Marth says simply, looking at the dashboard. "You never thanked me. Like you said, I had to trust you. I did, and we experience a once in a lifetime glorious occasion. Now, I deserve the thanks."

Ike scoffed, looking out the other way. "Unbelievable. You're expecting me to grant you a reward? I'll never have sex with you again."

Marth growls low in his throat. "Don't turn into Samus."

"Oh, so now you're comparing me to your ex-girlfriend. You want to revisit those memories of Melee? You never talk about them! I can gladly revisit them for you. I remember that you turned homosexual because of her, am I right? Are you suddenly feeling the urge to change back because I'm not giving you some incentive?"

"I didn't say I needed a gift or anything asshole. If you'd listen to me for just a few seconds-"

Ike pounded the steering wheel. "I don't even know why I'm dating you Marth! How about that for you? You constantly make me feel like absolute shit because I'm just another person to screw around with."

Marth felt as if someone punched him in the gut. "Ike- I- I've never said-"

"Screw this!" Ike screamed. He hit the brake, the car skidding to a stop. Marth flew forward and smashed his head against the dashboard.

"Ike, what in the hell are you doing?"

"Going for a walk." he snarled. Ike wrenched off his seatbelt and jumped out of the front seat for all it was worth. Marth clutched his head and let his gaze follow Ike's enraged path.

"Why do we constantly tear each other apart?" Marth whispers to himself, hugging his body tight.

* * *

Marth sighs, and lets himself readjust the needed pieces inside his skin, whilst trying to submerge the unwanted rest into the blue of his bloodstream to clot until he once again has room enough. Only when he has a mind to once again allow that process will it happen again, that's how it has to go.

The dirty water from the tap is cool, smelling like dirt and damp growing things you find on the sunrise sides of dilapidated buildings, rotwood barn houses, secret pathways behind the garbage dump. It splashes up his forearms, wetting his rolled up sleeves, stinging his cuts and soothing heated bruises. It's almost as if Ike was tenderly kissing him, slowly and softly enough where it's almost as if Ike's lips were phantoms.

An amniotic lull fills Marth's mind, hushing the worst of the wordless murmuring, leaving the world muted save for his own heart beat and a dull, surf like a roar echoing in his ears. It's why he doesn't at first notice the rustling, or the sound. Prowling shapes that don't quite reflect in the mirror startle him now, unlike before when he was used to them.

Too lost in thaw of the waters, the sudden noise -the opening and slamming of stall doors, restless pacing of heavy boots- comes through a condensed decade of time that stood still and when it finally reaches him, he clenches the side of the tub. It is all Marth can do to ignore the nervous jolt down his spine, and (he can't stop the pit opening up in his belly, a portal to black seamed faces with deadlight irises) he tries to keep his attention on the water circling the drain.

He turns off the faucet, the rusted knob whining shrilly. The smoky walls eat the sound (to end all) and leave only an afterthought that couldn't even be called a memory in his ears.

The farthest stall from the door cracks thunderously closed, rebounding harshly into the stone divide, momentum bleeding off into an abused swing. Marth looks at Ike in the mirror, dark eyed and carefully blank; without his glasses he can't see the lines that make up Ike's expression, but there's a guilty shuffle, jacketed shoulders shrugging awkwardly. "Sorry."

Flicking excess water off his hands, Marth turns and leans the small of his back on the porcelain basin, chin tilted down to keep away the scattering sun glare streaming from holes in the roof. "S'alright." he answers.

He tastes pennies, the gritted stink of copper and rotting blood.

Ike grins wrily, a crooked flash of teeth behind thinned lips. A loaded smile stamped in unpleasant sodality. "Slipped my grip with what I said. I'm not..." he tries speaking. Marth looks at Ike, and thinks he is made of feathers, twisted and warped out of line which are insubstantial everywhere but alongside his shadow; rust scratches into his ribcage like a recursive disease, breath swelling over sounds he has no control of, over voices he has no name for, and Marth imagines him being pulled taut. Soldered and stitched over and over and over: no real repair in sight. The smile fades, all the lines on his face collapsing to hide behind his hands. "I just can't think straight. I'm sorry, I'm-"

The split light along the floor and walls wavers as if candle flame breathed on by cool winter winds, bony limbed trees scrape loudly over the tin roof, and it feels like the silence has cracked and begun to run over all those raw wounds. "You don't have to apologize. It's fine to leave it as is." Marth shoves his still damp hands into his pockets, pushing off towards the door. And he means it as an affirmation, forgiveness.

And he finds that he means it.

* * *

At the stadium -wayback when Marth was only physically holding his insides in place and he could halfway believe death was just the end again and not mercy or escape or a prelude to something worse- he had a hard time seeing colors any more vivid than the patina pallet inside the locker he was hiding in, for the reptilian Bowser would sure kill him if he was found. The iv stands looked like oxidized stalks of metallic moss, the drip turning the foul brackish shade of still water in a sinkhole to a sickly, vomit green. His bandages were always brown in the infirmary, never blue like he asked. The walls pulsed and the shadows moved and everywhere was the feeling of claustrophobia. Marth had not, for what felt like a very long time, wanted to look at anything besides his hands.

Somedays, he thinks- thought, dammit- thought, that Lucina was no exception, but she was understanding, or at least she tried to be, kind and fumbling and hurt and angry and worried and sad, and Marth is sorry for that most of all: when he would pry his clammy fingers from her sweaty grip: her eyes, so dark, glittering, and he thought of the shiny globs of filth, of his own blood, on cracked tile, on glass daggers. He wanted her to understand, he desired that she would somehow find meaning in their madness. He remembers the colors of people when me first met them, in which Lucina radiated a gorgeous, stunning amaranthine.

Through the flimsy modesty barrier, Marth can't remember the first colors he saw Ike in. Marth also remembers the youngsters, another painful memory that shatters his fragile fantasies.

Ness though, and to a lesser degree, Lucas, he saw in child bright colors. Like crayon drawings of cardinal, raven, gold suns. Like fire through magnified glass. Then, he simply couldn't look. He wanted to bury the thought deep inside his mind where it would never reappear, but it stood stock still and never let him forget.

* * *

The engine won't turn over.

Ike curses, petting the dashboard and murmuring into the wheel. Supplications interspersed with grinding prayers and apologies, a baptismal kiss placed to the 12'o clock hand position.

Marth watches -seconds, moments, minutes- without seeing, as he flexes cool fingers inside his pockets. They feel numb and alien and raw and smooth and blue. He smells ice and sand and engine rust, his throat swelling against it until he opens the back door and drags out his duffle bag. The black phone clatters off the seat, thumping mutely on the carpet, but he ignores it. As Marth tries to get out of the car and help Ike with the hood, the window cracks from his forceful push and a small chink of glass slashes his face. The phone clatters and chimes uncontrollably in the backseat, and it takes all of his willpower to not focus on it.

He thinks, " _Later. I'll get it later. Now, where did I put that tin of recovery..."_

At the bottom. It's at the bottom of all of their junk. Of course it is. At the bottom of the damn suitcases and packages. He seizes it, his motions fierce and fiery- just a simple tin box of band aids, pastel pink with lavender outlines, a small magenta flower decorating the top alongside a little yellow nose- and written in curly cursive is the name 'Hello Kitty' below that white face. Marth pops the tin open, upsiding its insides (all over all over) into his hand. He picks the widest one first and lets the rest drop into the mouth of his duffle.

It was a joke, a joke (at least that's what Marth remembers), at first, the Hello Kitty band aids. The two were in Illinois, the first gray-white days of November, thick candy floss clouds and a northern wind that made Ike's nose run red (like sick mouths, like inflamed nails, like crying eyes like... like the devil), and made him sneeze, and he could never stay warm enough. November had been a month of huddling close under all the motel blankets, static charge building in the locations where they moved harshly, jerking against each other, all generating friction against their hips and sharp lines which emitted sour moans. Marth had laid in their bed, limbs irritated by the warmth of the covers and Ike's slick skin, and he began to scratch at his arms.

The next day when the air was crisp and the heat of the sun cut sharply into their cleared eyes, Ike grabbed Marth's arm and turned it over carefully and soothed his fingers over the abraded skin. It had stung, and the blood smeared into his skin. "Not good at all." he had said, the rolling sounds catching rough against too much cigarette smoke and too little coffee. Marth remembers sneaking a weak smile up and up and up, hiding in the stale ash smell of Ike's loose shirt, soothing both himself and the things inside that shift and wince away from the bright day.

He had replied, "It's only bad because you say it's bad, darling." The sleek sounds of vowels and consonants find an easy cadence that slipped into the grooves and notches left by night and the cold and the unfathomable distance. Not quite a salve, but almost. The two start kissing close. They leave, letting the November air have the last laugh. It literally did, because it screwed up their ride from the frigid weather. Just like how it wouldn't start right smack dab on the middle of Highway 45 in the middle of nowhere.

The jeep sputters and whispers and Ike whispers almost maniacally, "Please, please, please, baby, please."

Marth peels back the collar of his shirt where it sticks to the cleaned out marks. He smoothes the bandage over it, and moves on because that's all he can do. Shakily and only a bit at the time, it's all they both do.

It's okay.

* * *

For what it's worth, Marth never moves very stiffly, after Ike asked him out. He tried focusing on the warm memory that was Ike asking him the question.

For what it's worth, that's not a whole lot, but it's something to grasp onto.

For what it's worth, there's no need for Ike to say sorry. Ever.

For what it's worth, he still does anyway.

* * *

"Dammit, just give me an answer. I'm running rather low on patience. Listen to this Marth, they call hundreds of times a day, but the moment _we_ call, they aren't even home?"

Ike snorts, and hits seven on the dialpad.

"Your message has been deleted. You have: 15 messages." says the feminine drone. Marth glances at the rearview mirror, and sees the disdain darkening Ike's face. He looks better now, just a little. (But not quite right.)

They're on the road again (whatever that's worth), Marth in the driver's seat, Ike lounging in the back propped up on duffle bags and stolen motel pillows.

The jeep's engine had eventually turned over with a loud whooping cough that shot foul exhaust from the tailpipe. It was like a snap, a sudden and brief opening in the niveous scrim blanketing the forefront of Marth's mind like a full body thaw starting at the cap of his skull.

They had stared, wide eyed at each other, before Marth felt his mouth open to say, steady and clear: "Hand over the keys."

And then they were on their way.

And then that was it.

So things are not better, but they are for whatever that's worth.

"You think Roy sounds mad? I don't think so." Marth remarks dryly, attention going to the road again. He sounds less exhausted than he has for days, but the weariness isn't gone: sunken bone deep, pooling to settle into his nooks and crannies. (Almost like a trade off, of sorts.)

He shifts his footing on the peddles, cautiously stretching his right leg, waiting for the sharp ache to spear through the scar, but nothing comes. No twinge, only a dull tightness. He drops his gaze to the wheel, to where the 12 hand goes, and chews his lip. He remembers the bad memories first, and only the bad memories. Bad memories of Dr. Mario, the main reason for Roy going off the deep end.

 _"A pit, a piece, a price." mumbles Dr. Mario grinning terribly wide beneath his mask, Roy shifting uncomfortably at his elbow and Marth is reminded of dark cellars, bruised faces and bashed in skulls while sitting at the desk._

"A-nope, he's peachy keen, I'll just betcha." Ike shuts the phone off, and leans forward over the middle compartment. He radiates an uncomfortable amount of heat that Marth can feel it even without touching him, fever hot and scalding like (he's being burned through). Lucas, when he was a baby had gotten sick, so very sick. A pang goes through Marth's leg. Another awful reminiscence. "I hate peaches, actually. The flesh is too soft, and you can never know when it'll be tasteless, too sweet."

Marth cracks his neck, then lets an easy curl cut through his mouth that tugs on the Hello Kitty bandaid on his cheek. "Peach made pretty good peaches. It his her name after all. Well, on topic of fruit... how do you feel about grapefruit?" Simpleminded conversations that had no end nor a purpose helped keep their hearts beating, so they continued them.

A raspy laugh cracks out of Ike's chest. "Well, yeah," he says, bumping their shoulders together, bringing with him his fever heat. "Of course. They suck worse than peaches. No Smasher made them." And that was all Ike said, leaving it at that.

* * *

Before Lucina, before Ike (and even before the tournament ) before all the fleeting and pretty brushes of hands and hearts and bodies and mouths, there was blond hair and the bleached bone expanse of sky and and harsh, salt choked words. It's a previous memory that he remembers all too well. Why Samus had to leave him... well it needed to go unsaid. Marth had no idea what would happen if he found out the true reason behind it.

And when he holds himself tightly, pinching at his split seams, he tells himself "Before- before- think of before,"

And if he leans uncomfortably against his own lies and whispers instead about touch, he'll whimper over and over again about people not touching his innocence. "Don't touch there, please-"

Then, later on the dirty tiled floor of some bathroom on some stretch of road in some state, he'll smile behind bloodshot eyes and the medicinal taste of tap water and downers, hunched in on himself and say, in broken honesty, "I-I-I- I've become this thing. About touch. I _want_ to be touched. I want it!"

Night comes with the jeep lapping at the last stretches of day and they hang there in that immeasurable instance between dusk and dark and light. This is the last stretch.

It weighs down on them, languidly draping over their shoulders in a warm lovers grasp. Marth's heart pulses in time with the rumble of the engine as he eases the jeep into the parking lot of a no tell motel, the kind with a droop neon sign that glows out from beneath the dusty purple sky.

He walks out alone to the check in office, stuttering with an uneven gait on numb legs; nervous ants stinging at his palms when he lays his hands flat on the cool desk. He fumbles with the pen, a signature skipping across the white sign-in page, and he curses softly to himself. He tries to pass a shaky smile to the tired clerk who wears a wooden crucifix tied on a leather string around their neck. The clerk says something about still feeling the wheel beneath his hands.

Marth says, "Thank you, have a good night." The moment he comes out with his key to get Ike, his knees crumble and he falls back into bruised parking lot.

The world slants, and surrounds him with the sounds and feelings of early morning vertigo, with all the bitter and passing ornaments of midnight, which curdle at his stomach and tingle down his ankles. Burning hands catch his shoulders, steadying him, they feel down his sides and loop around his hips and Marth pushes up on tip toes and blocks out the neon light and purpling sky and dizzy fatigue.

Marth's nose fills up with the stagnant smell of sweat seeped in an adrenaline rushed body while trying to enjoy unrest and the two lovers grip at each other neither too tightly or too loosely, pulling each other with an animalistic sense of direction towards their room, towards the washed out bathroom in grayscale, towards the rusted shower faucet with copper tasting water that gets in their mouths and their eyes and runs down the sinews of their backs. They take their first real breath and Marth tries not to choke with Ike's fingers on his lips. They murmur and they do not hear each other, but the sentiment is there, and it is felt and they lay on the floor of the tub and brand the meaning of it into the sloping valleys of their skin until the water runs cold.

Somehow, someway Marth prys himself from the cheap porcelain embrace of the floor to the cracked parallel lines of tile on raw hands, then rises up on creaking legs, while trying to hang on the stained counter with all the make-believe strength he's forced into his fragile bones.

He stares bleary eyed at his reflection and doesn't feel quite real, feels a disconnect, aimless in the aftermath like the sudden absence of pain that comes with popping a joint back into place. It feels like he's losing time, but hardly any has passed, mental stills and lines of emotional code and slick machinery of his heart and his head realign and he remembers everything that's lead to this point, this space, this vertice of this shape of this person, persons, _his_ person.

And Marth, because he is a Lowell, takes time to reassert his situation, not as long as Ike does, but sometimes, just sometimes he needs to remember that, again they both share the same pain. He wipes away the fog on the glass to peer at the tall, comforting shape of Ike's now standing frame. Ike is wicking away the moisture from his high cheekbones and drawn dark circles and smiles that smile, which is natural even without the blood and mucus sardonian lilt.

Here, or maybe it's now, they are (mostly) free of the need for large gestures, their conversations are told in the form of abortive fidgets; this new kind of lull, noise, static, being, that translates into simple motion even Marth can swallow and greet like a lover. He turns with eyes that see only in soft sepia tones and moves close enough to touch.

It can be easy, sometimes.

And ever so rarely, it can be real.

Marth loves when his emotions are real.

He cups the back of Ike's neck, naked except for all his scars and shower water. He feels his skin pebbling under the a/c blowing in from the room. Ike isn't better, he knows, because he can feel it where their skin meets, the tiny points of contact and heat. Ike is not better. But he's almost (close enough to so he could be kissed) okay. It's enough for the night, enough to be good, and Marth shudders and sags under Ike while his fingers roam and when they tumble to the bed, old springs protest under the sudden splay of of bodies. Marth feels his heart break and sink and come to rest somewhere near the base of his spine.

"Hey, hey," he mutters, pressing his wet and open mouthed love against Ike's temple. Ike smells of nicotine and metal and something almost chemical. "You okay… you with me?"

The silence is beginning to resettle over them, when Ike brings up two hot, restless hands to cradle his face, and leans up to lick away the cool droplets falling into Marth's swimming eyes. "Yeah, I'm here, I'm me. I'm here now."

It's enough, almost like a handhold, so Marth hums low around an anxious half smile-half grimace and sinks down.

* * *

It feels less like waking up so much as it feels like suddenly being awake.

"Hey."

Marth thinks about feigning sleep, or perhaps maybe trying to fall back to sleep and drift into dreamlessness. Instead he rolls over very quietly, brushing his cheek against Ike's slack fingers where he settles. The sheets whisper, light and glowing in the dark room, and Marth can feel the warmth from Ike where they don't touch. There's nothing special about the warmth. The realism passed.

"Hey."

"It's early, sun hasn't come up yet," Ike says, sleep deepening his voice. Marth closes his eyes. He thinks, distantly, that it's been awhile. Since he's heard it so clearly. Ike continues. "Feels like I slept for years."

Peeking through his lashes, Marth wets his lips and says, "Maybe you did."

"Maybe," Ike agrees. He rubs at his stubbled jaw with the stump of his forefinger. "It feels like it," he repeats. "What about you?"

"Me?" Marth dips further into his pillow. "I don't know. I hear sound and feel the noises and taste the colors of this room, but I'm nothing. Even though my senses are working, I know I'm not sleeping nor am I awake." Sometimes Marth likes babbling. It keeps him somewhat sane. _Somewhat_.

Ike brushes away a tangle of hair from Marth's face. "Hungry? Arizona has Waffle Houses, right."

The a/c rattles and kicks up again, displacing the still air in the room. Marth grabs the thin sheet and pulls it over his head. "Sure." he says, not quite ready to move.

* * *

They only leave the bed when the sun has risen hours into the day, and it's a slow, reluctant shamble. Ike shivers terribly when the cool air blows over his skin and he is the first to shrug on yesterday's clothes which means he is the one who has to get the bags from the car. When the door clicks shut, Marth swings his leg over the bed and walks to the bathroom, taking along the thin white sheet wrapped around his chest and held loosely over his arms like a bridal shawl. The cold floor sends chills racing up his legs and he thinks of hospitals and he thinks of mornings spent staring out of a tiny kitchen window, but there is no smell of antiseptic nor the warm aroma of percolating coffee, only faint traces of sweat and pine air freshener. He touches the mirror where water stains have dried on it, leaving heated cloudy fingerprints and absently letting the sheet slip lower.

He doesn't really focus on his reflection, eyes wandering instead to the muted colors and glancing light. He is leaning closer when he hears the simulated shutter of a phone camera. Marth looks over his shoulder, glaring blandly at a grinning Ike. "Really?"

Ike shrugs, the grin widening. "It looked really good. The dark light and your pasty skin made all the hickies stand out." Scoffing, Marth hitches the sheet higher, and brushes past to reach his duffle. Ike laughs.

* * *

Ike stretches his arms over his head, fingers spread and splitting apart sunrays, shaking off time spent in flux and shadow; he turns on his heel, backed by the shining red flank of the jeep, and Marth understands (a little) why the thought comes as (almost) easy as breathing.

Ike pops his knuckles on his right fist and twirls the keys with his right hand, butchers quotes he read somewhere on a dog eared and graffitied bathroom stall. "'And so, onwards, with nothing left over?"

And Marth shrugs, a too big flannel over shirt dipping off his shoulder, answering in kind because that's all there really is left to do. "'Human, all too human."

In that moment before leaving, is when Marth feels his memories fade from him.

* * *

 **I hope you all saw where this was coming from. Don't ever expect something like this from me again. Ever. Also, do know that this one-shot is dedicated to Satsuki Inuyasha Imaizumi, originally known as Inuyasha Armin Scarlet. Hope you loved it! Please review guys, thanks again!**

 **~ Paradigm**


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